Nowa walked through the endless corridors.
'Right, that was a fucking disaster. I lost my goddamn composure completely… But at least those things I gave them should halt their advances and shift their focus for a while.'
He shoved his hands in his pockets.
'As much as I want to discover the truth about my own biology, I need to escape. A S A P. This gilded cage is worse than Miss Ribbon's dusty shrine. Maybe if I disobeyed the rules, a quick trip to the forbidden clock tower or basement without resorting to massacring this whole place, that would be enough to get me thrown out.'
He walked on, ignoring the clusters of fairy maids who scattered like startled birds in his path. As he passed on, he passed big fairy maids, the same height as normal female humans, confused but wisely stayed out of his way.
Then, something in the corner piqued his senses.
He walked toward it and found what appeared to be an ordinary Fairy Maid, human-sized like the others. But his senses say otherwise. The smell was wrong. The same offness he'd sensed from that 'human' in the village, the one whose aura marked him as an anomaly.
The fairy spotted him and froze. Sweating visibly on getting caught by him specifically. She bowed as if pleading not to be discovered, then she ran. She reacted nothing like her work crew in the SDM.
'...Welp. Looks like these mansion walls got invaded by a spy too,' he thought. 'How long has this been going on?' A pause. '...No. I don't wanna care about this realm. Ignore it, Nowa.'
Then he looked over the distance as there was a crowd of fairies, he stopped.
"What's with the crowd?" A pause. "Maybe that's the exit."
His right hand shot up, followed by a string of Liquid nano rune. Anchoring above the corner of the ceiling. Then he yanked himself, passing above them. The fairies did not notice him, let alone stop their chatter. His whole body spun like an acrobatic to make a turn with the momentum he carried, then shot his left hand as his right hand's string receded to wind for another string shot, swinging himself.
After several minutes of aimless swinging, he landed like a feather in the middle of a hallway that looked identical to the last five. His liquid nano rune receded in his sleeves.
"Damn it, Nowa, for fuck's sake you're a goddamn 35-year-old yet you still get lost," he muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
"Well it isn't my fucking fault this mansion is too vast, you swiss cheese brain!" he argued back to himself in a hushed, furious tone. "I literally woke up inside this place with zero map of this edgy, over-decorated labyrinth."
His frustrated walk continued until he reached a set of imposing, huge double doors. He looked up at their ornate carvings, then stared straight ahead, weighing his options.
'The basement or clock tower?' he internally scoffed. 'Well, whatever. Time to find out which one gets me ejected out of the spaceship.'
As he stepped forward and reached for the handle, a voice sliced through the silence from far behind him.
"That's the library, Mr. Beckitzer."
Nowa froze, his hand hovering just inches from the handle. He turned slowly to find Sakuya standing at the far end of the corridor.
"...Well I uh… was looking for a garden place," he said. He nodded, trying to sell it. "Yes, the garden. If there was one. Or just outside for fresh air."
Sakuya did not buy his flimsy excuse for a second, but her expression remained neutral. "The gardens are in the opposite wing," she stated. "It is an easy place to get lost. Please, allow me to escort you."
'Damn itttttttttt. This day just keeps getting fuckin worse! If I deny her hospitality now, it's an outright hostile act! They would notice what I'm trying to do! Shithead, Nowa, you shithead!'
He let out a long, audible sigh of utter resignation, his shoulders slumping.
"Yeah, sure," he admitted. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "Lead the way."
She gave a single, courteous nod. "This way."
She then turned and began walking at a measured patient pace, neither too fast to be rude nor too slow to allow him to linger.
"Also, please refrain from doing that move within the mansion, Mr. Beckitzer." She added.
Nowa followed a few paces behind. "Ho? You've seen me do it?"
"I saw you at the last moment, so I followed."
"Haha…" his gaze fell on the floor just behind her heels. 'Think, Nowa, think. There's gotta be an opt out...'
His eyes slowly glanced up, lingered on her back.
'...Now that I think about it. Why is she here? Following me? A duty? An order?'
The realization clicked into place. No normal servant would shadow a guest who'd merely stepped out for air unless they wanted something from him.
'She was ordered by something awful, I presume.'
He let out a silent sigh. 'Not only have I got a boundary goddess's eye on my back, now this great brat is watching and plotting something I don't like.'
The next thought surfaced with terrifying ease.
'I could just destroy this place. One single void blast. I've destroyed a universe before to protect people. So why would I care about this one?'
He paused, the thought hanging there. And then he looked at her. At the curve of her shoulders, the silver hair, the way she walked with quiet purpose. She reminds him of Amy, minus the silver hair color, which complicates it even more.
'...No. I can't… This is just too much. I hate it…'
The violence of his past settled back into its cage, and he followed her in silence.
They walked for a while before Sakuya reached a familiar corner. She gestured down a branching hall without slowing her march toward the garden.
"The portrait gallery is down that corridor."
Nowa looked at her, then down the hall she had pointed to. A dry, cynical smirk. "Heh. Imagine a child getting bored and painting over those portraits."
Sakuya did not stop, nor did she look at him. "If so, then they would be punished severely and accordingly."
"Heh. 'Scary' way to put it," he muttered.
Finally, they reached a set of glass-paned doors. Sakuya pushed one open, revealing the vast, manicured expanse of the SDM's garden, the air cool and sweet with the scent of dusk's blooms.
"We are here," she announced, stepping outside. "But be advised, nightfall will come soon."
Nowa placed both hands behind his head. "I don't mind a bit of starglazing." He followed her out, his eyes immediately finding a stone bench situated along the central pathway, surrounded by the intricate field of flowers and hedges.
"I'm going to take a seat," he said, his voice losing its defensive edge. "All this walking is making me tired."
He sat on the bench, his gaze lost in the sunset. As the gold and orange bled into the sky, a sense of comfortability, a feeling long forgotten, touched his lips in a faint, unforced smile.
He glanced to the side where Sakuya stood. "You don't have to stand there, you know. I'm not going to dig a tunnel under the sidewalk to the USA."
Sakuya gave a single, graceful nod and quietly took a seat on the far end of the same bench, maintaining a respectful but now shared space. Nowa rests his hands on his laps. The silence between them was no longer empty, but filled with the chirping of evening insects.
He began, breaking the silence. "The clothing thing was just a test, by the way. Just in case you're still fuming about it." A deep pause. "I know these types very well, before you all met me."
She didn't fully turn to him, but her eyes glanced his way. "I had deduced you were that type of person."
"...And about the penis bit. Sorry." He added.
"...You don't have to remind me that bit, you know." Sakuya's cheeks flushed a slight pink.
He shrugged. Then there was a long silence as Sakuya's gaze turned to the sky once more.
Nowa broke it with a half-confession, half-question, prompted as much by her familiar presence as by his own need. "Hey… I've got a question."
Sakuya glanced at him, and before she could speak, he continued.
"What would you do if your whole life was a constant conflict, one after the next? Even during a break, you'd know the next one would be more hellish than the last."
It was both a plea and a self-question about his past actions.
Sakuya was silent for a moment longer, her eyes returned to tracing the constellations.
"I would ensure my duties were fulfilled within the current conflict," she said. "And during the break, I would not dwell on the hell to come. I would use it to maintain order. To sharpen the knives. To polish the silver. To ensure the garden was weeded."
She finally turned her head to look at him. "The conflict is like a storm. You cannot stop the storm. You can only ensure the windows are latched and the roof is sound. The next storm's severity is irrelevant to the task of securing the shutters now."
A pause. "To do otherwise is to live in the storm twice. Once in anticipation, and once in reality. That is an inefficient use of one's energy."
'...Reality can be harsher than that… but I get your point…' He did not meet her gaze, but his eyes were on the stone path.
"But, what if that one person can walk through the storm. Alter its course, doing it for the rest of the civilization to survive? And…" He fell silent, unable to tell more.
"And…?" Sakuya asked, a slight turn of her head.
"...Forget it… Just… Answer the first one."
Sakuya watched him for a long moment.
"Then that person would carry something far heavier than the storm itself," she said.
Nowa didn't move.
"If one has the power to alter the storm, to turn it aside so others may live, then that is not survival. That is stewardship." She turned her gaze back toward the sky. "And a steward does not have the luxury of rest. Not truly. Because the moment he stops, the storm he held back will resume."
A pause.
"But if that steward walks through the storm instead of around it, if he lets it break against him so others may pass safely... then he is not a steward at all." Her voice was quieter now. "He is a shield. And shields break."
She glanced at him. "No one can be the storm's sole opposition forever. That is not inefficiency. That is arithmetic."
The silence between them stretched.
"Even a force that can alter a storm," she said, "still feels the wind."
Then, after a beat, she added, "But if such a person existed here, I would ask them what happens when the civilization they saved is finally safe. Because if they have spent so long walking through the storm, they may no longer know how to stand in clear weather."
She did not look at him as she said it.
"That is what I would answer," Sakuya said. "For whatever it is worth."
"...I …see."
Another silence stretched among the two under the evening sky as Sakuya's gaze turned to the garden.
"Are you always like this?" he asked, his voice quiet.
Sakuya glanced at him. "Like what?"
"Cold. Calculating. Professional. Order." He said, his eyes now turned on the emerging stars.
"That is what I am," she replied, her gaze also returning to the sky. "And how I became useful to my Mistress."
'Huh…?' Nowa then follow up. "Why do you serve Remilia?"
Sakuya glanced at him, a flicker of something personal in her professional composure. "She gave me a home."
The words struck Nowa's heart with the force of a physical blow. It was the same story, the same foundational need, the very thing he himself had been given and then had violently ripped away.
"...I-I see…" he whispered.
'Not only does she look like Amy... she has what I started with. A place. A purpose. A home….' He turned his head away, unable to look at her, the parallel was too painful to hold in his gaze.
Sakuya studied the stars, her voice softening almost imperceptibly.
"Amy," she began. "That was the reason you mistook me when we first met. And your total shutdown at the mimic in the Misty Lake incident. What was she to you?"
Nowa was quiet for so long that Sakuya wondered if he would answer at all. When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped bare of all its usual cynicism and armor, leaving only a raw, quiet truth.
"...A mother figure," he said. "Who saw me... and took me in."
Sakuya held her gaze on him. "I see." She paused, allowing the silence to encourage him. "What was she like?"
Nowa softly chuckled. "...A funny and soft mother, sometimes with unexpected twists. She loved to say philosophical things in the simplest ways." His voice took on a fond, mimicking tone. "'Right, Nowa, you see, flowers don't bloom when they lack water and soil.' And more... always with a smile."
Sakuya's gaze held something closer to gentle warmth. "...She must have been a wonderful lady."
Nowa looked up at the constellations, as if searching for her face among them. "Yeah. She had an opposite sister, her name was Mia Beckitzer. I called her Aunt Mia, the cold and protective one. She was always there to correct us, to remind Amy's softness." He smiled faintly at the memory.
Then the smile died. The next memory wasn't the protective Mia. It was her face, all warmth gone, looking down on him with cold disdain. Her final words echoed in his soul: 'I won't forgive you.'
Sakuya was quiet, absorbing the new, deeply personal data he had given her. She gave a slow, knowing nod.
Nowa fell silent too, for a long, long moment.
Then his heart began to warm, a physical sensation spreading through his chest that was both comforting and agonizing.
'...Huh..? What is this…?' he thought, alarmed. He glanced sideways at Sakuya. Her profile, calm and serene in the moonlight, looked so much like his mother. His heart throbbed, a painful, longing ache, as if he had seen a ghost made flesh. He averted his eyes, the moment shattering.
'No. Don't mistake it. She's Sakuya, not Amy. Why am I like this? I don't like this… I don't like this… I don't want to stay. I can't... not when I already failed to protect Amy… My reward for all I've done is coming due… stop…'
He stood up abruptly, the motion shaky. Sakuya glanced at him, but he refused to meet her gaze, hiding the turmoil in his eyes.
"I'm… going back to my room," he said, his voice tight.
He began to walk away, but with every step, his heart ached with a desperate, confused desire to be with Amy, a desire that kept mistakenly, painfully, latching onto the silhouette of the Chief Maid he left behind on the bench.